


The End of Spring

by tangofox



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Depression, Graphic descriptions of suicide, Grief, M/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:09:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3946588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangofox/pseuds/tangofox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grief is natural, something that everyone must go through. But that doesn't mean that it's easy, or that Grantaire is equipped to deal with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of Spring

It happened on a Monday. His whole life, Grantaire had always told anyone who would listen, that nothing good ever happened on a Monday. It was a bleak day, the sun never shined, and even when it did, it was never bright enough, never touched his skin in a way that made him want to greet the morning with a bounce in his step. There was no sunshine that Monday morning, something which Grantaire found very fitting. Of course the heavens themselves would feel the need to weep at such a loss. His eyes remained dry, itchy, but dry, and he supposed he would have to let the skies cry for him for now.

  
Last night, had perhaps been the best Sunday of his life. He had dropped off flyers at the Musain, and his usual arguing with Enjolras had began. They had argued all the way back to the blondes large apartment, they had argued while Grantaire had scolded him for not eating, and they had argued while Grantaire cooked him an omelette. Afterwards, when Enjolras had kissed him, stood next to the kitchen sink, he had convinced himself it was a cruel trick somebody was playing on him. After all, a Prince doesn't kiss an ogre. (Of course a democratically elected Prince, in this instance). But Enjolras did want to kiss him. And he couldn't rightly tell him he was wrong to want that. Enjolras was...everything. So he had let political arguing turn into fevered kissing, into Enjolras confessing feelings that confused him, feelings for Grantaire. In the morning, when Enjolras was all talked out, he bid him farewell with a kiss at the doorstep, a display Grantaire might have described as nauseating if it were with anyone else.

  
He can feel Enjolras beside him now, warm body against his back, firm hand upon his shoulder. He's watching them carry the body bag out, making sure they don't upset Jehan. He would be upset if they touched his stuff. If they....no. He wouldn't be upset. He cannot be anymore. Enjolras is telling him something, whispering in his ear, but Grantaire shakes him off, staring at the bathroom as if he expects Jehan to walk out and start up a conversation with him.

  
He can see the hardwood floors clearly, streaked with red, paramedics stepping in it without paying much attention. It's not a crime scene. what happened in their shared bathroom, in their claw-footed tub, is obvious to everyone. Grantaire had wanted to put some cheap lino down. But Jehan had told him the wooden flooring was old, and beautiful. He hoped the wood wouldn't stain. He wondered if his thought process should be elsewhere, instead of worrying if he would have to look at his best friends blood staining the floors, every time he went to piss.

  
It's easy to focus on things like that. On whether Jehan used the last good razor blades, and if he would need to find some money to buy some more. Or who would cover the rent that was due in two weeks. Did Jehan even think about rent? Or the fact that Grantaire might need to shave his face? It's hard to use the word selfish, when little Jean Prouvaire was the most selfless person he had ever met. But it also hard not to. Jehan hadn't even called. He had told Grantaire he was going out for the night.

  
Was it planned? It must have been planned. If Grantaire took three steps to the right, he would be able to see the little brown bottle, rolled against one of the tubs feet. Laudanum. Grantaire has no fucking idea where he even got it from, but he can't get the image out of his head of some greasy fat peddler in an alleyway, dressed up in victorian garb. He wonders what it tasted like. If he drank it first and then hurt himself after. If it numbed the pain. He didn't know the first damn thing about laudanum. Of course Jehan couldn't be normal even in his last moments. It had always been the thing that had made Grantaire love his best friend so, his lack of normalcy. Now it just left an acrid taste on his tongue.

  
He feels Enjolras holding his hair and patting his back as he vomits into the toilet, thinking only on whether his trousers were stained with blood now. It was everywhere. How had it gotten everywhere? He yells and Enjolras flinches back, leaves him alone, Grantaire not even able to remember what he had said. The police come in and tell him theres a number he can call to have the mess cleaned up, but he tells them he'll handle it, that he has to, that they wont clean the wood right.   
The paramedics come again, they tell him they need a number for a relative, and Grantaire laughs, tells them he's his brother, and signs the form saying he will handle all the arrangements. They tried contacting his parents after the first attempt, and again for the second. They didn't want to know, so Grantaire stopped trying. He was Jehan's only family.

  
He was family. He was his family. So why didn't he call? The words leave his lips in hoarse mumblings as bleach fills his nostrils, as his fingertips itch as he rubs the scouring pad against the floorboards. He had always been there before. Any time Jehan had needed him. He had spent night after night holding him, being there for him. Nursing self inflicted wounds, listening to his problems, holding him tight and promising him that everything would be okay. But this time, he hadn't called.   
He blames Enjolras, at first. If Enjolras hadn't started arguing, hadn't kissed him, he would have been home much sooner. But that wasn't true. He would have gone to the gym to meet Bahorel, and he would have joined him for drinks afterwards. Either way, he had never planned to return home before the early hours of the morning. So he could blame Bahorel. But Bahorel didn't make his decisions for him. He didn't force him, or even coax him into doing anything. Neither did Enjolras. His actions were his own. So then of course, the blame rests on his shoulders. He should have been at home. He should have read the warning signs. But that doesn't work, not with Jehan. The warning signs had been there since the day he met him, at seventeen. Is he to blame because he didn't appoint himself as watchman? There had been signs before. Slips in moods, Jehan acting strangely. Not this time. Everything had seemed fine. No cause for concern.

  
Grantaire can see dark red patches in the knots of the wood, where the blood wont come out. If Jehan were here he would make a metaphor out of it, spin those dark stains into something beautiful. But Grantaire was no poet. words didn't come to him like that.

  
Later he pisses into an empty beer bottle, because once he's closed the bathroom door, he can't bring himself to open it again. As if he can trap the sadness behind the door, stop it from seeping into his bones. As the alcohol dulls his mind, he wonders if it's contagious. If Jehans sadness will pass onto him. He's always been depressed. Not in the way Jehan was. Jehan got angry, cried, ranted and raved. Grantaire laid down on the floor and failed to see any point in getting up.

  
He toasts Jehan with a shot of absinthe, remembering how Jehan said he always liked the taste of it on Grantaires tongue when they kissed. Three different people knock on the door at three different times, but he doesn't answer any of them. He needs time. They have to give him that.

  
He decides he'll have to take over Jehan's allotment. His flowers needed to live, to keep on growing. He had been talking non stop about how tall he hoped his sunflowers would grow. It was Grantaires responsibility to make sure they grew taller than any he had ever seen. He would fail, he knew that already, failure was written in his past and his future. But he would try for Jehan. If he at least tried, then that would be enough. He would come up with a way to make rent too, because Jehan loved those hardwood floors, and a new tenant might come and scuff them up with their shoes. He couldn't allow that.

  
He wondered if they would let him take the body. If he could bury him under a big oak tree, or if he could leave him upon a stone in the forest and let the animals devour him. Or maybe he could put him in a boat, set him to sail down the Seine, burning brightly for all to see. The idea of giving the poet a 'normal' burial set his teeth on edge. It didn't suit him. He was nature. He was birth and life and death and he had always burned too brightly for the world to understand. Grantaire couldn't fit all that on a headstone. Maybe he could get Joly to pull some strings and they could bury him in the allotment. He could become plant foot. But, he wasn't even sure if decomposition worked like that. He asks Jehan about it, but he doesn't answer

  
Grantaire didn't know silence could be so deafening.

  
He's not sure when hes ever going to feel okay again. But he will. He knows he has to. Because he has to water the sunflowers. He has to see them grow.


End file.
